Background: For the last two weeks, Zekoslav and I have been collaborating to try to reconstruct the Slavic language of western Hungary. Originally meant to act as a superstrate for my Pannonian Romance conlang, I’ve split it off into its own thing.

For the purposes of this work, we assume that a Slavic state roughly corresponding to the Duchy of Pannonia in the 8th and 9th centuries exists to the west of the Danube river, but east and north of modern Slovenia and Croatia respectively. I call the language spoken in this state Pannonian (jezik panoski), although the exact pronunciation is subject to change of course. The major POD is that the Hungarians, for whatever reason, are defeated at the Battle of Pressburg, and are pushed out of western Pannonia by Braslav (a major historical figure to the Pannonians). Therefore, an independent Slavic kingdom survives for several centuries until its annexation by Austria via Bavarian Nobles. However, the majority of Pannonia speaks a Slavic language until the present day, but there is Germanic influence comparable to that on Czech.

Below, I start out detailing the major sound changes between Proto-Slavic and Pannonian. Once that is done, I will then add a phonological chart and begin working out what the grammar might be like due to the sound changes I've included.

(Earlier OP spoiled below)

Spoiler:

Vowels:

Merger of /ɨ/ and /i/: One of the earliest differences between the Slavic languages is their treatment of /ɨ/. South Slavic and West Slavic both fronted this phoneme to /i/, however, West Slavic left a trace of palatalization before the fronting. Hungarian also had /ɯ/, which was later fronted and merged with /i/. There is little doubt in my mind that Pannonian Slavic too, will front /ɨ/ and completely merge it with /i/ everywhere. Whether or not a distinction remains between former /i/ and /ɨ/ in the palatalization of the consonants will be treated later.
Chain shift: A common occurance in many Prekmurje Slovene dialects, as well as some Kajkavian dialects of Croatia, is a general back vowel shift of /a/ > /ɑ/ > /o/ > /u/ > /y/. Perhaps due to an Avar or Hungarian adstrate, many dialects of Pannonian will also participate in this sound shift. Most Pannonian dialects will feature at least a shift of /u/ > /y/. Northern dialects will unround this /y/ to /i/. Central and Eastern dialects, including the prestigious dialects of Lake Balaton, will also innovate phonemic /ø/. Southern dialects may not have fronted /u/ at all, or perhaps only fronted them to /ʉ/.

Fate of the yers (Havlik's Law): In accented, or “strong” syllables, the yers lower to /e/ and /o/ respectively. In unaccented syllables, they drop, perhaps leaving a trace of palatalization. All of this occurs between the 9th and 10th centuries.

Outcome of /ǫ/: According to Richards, there are a lot of borrowings of Slavic words into Hungarian point to the phonetic value of Common Slavic /ǫ/ as /ų/. Like Serbocroatian, the value of Pannonian /ǫ/ is /ų/, and this later denasalizes to /u/.

Outcome of /ę/: In most Croatian dialects, this vowel merges straight with /e/. In Czech, this led to a 2-way split between /a/ and /e/ depending on whether it was short or long. In Slovak, the quality of this vowel is preserved as is, with no change — /æ/. Although I have no evidence to suggest for it, I believe Pannonian dialects will preserve /æ/, unless I can find some dialects in central Slovakia that run the contrary, or loans in Hungarian that suggest otherwise. My romance conlang Pelsodian, too, has [æ] for its /a/, and so does its Romance neighbors to the west (barring the Dalmatian language). Therefore, I have an incentive to preserve /æ/, though I am still open to change.

Consonants:

Outcome of *tj *dj: This became alveolar affricates in West Slavic and alveopalatal affricates in South Slavic. The outcome of some Hungarian towns such as Vencsellő < *Vętjeslavŭ seems to suggest a South Slavic reflex. Therefore, the outcome of *tj *dj is /t͡ʃ/ /d͡ʒ/. As this occurs, the clusters *stj and *zdj behave differently, as they might always have been affricates. I’ve decided to treat them as single *tj *dj and have the outcome be the same.

Palatalization: While I am waiting to see what outcomes in Hungarian may suggest, I am leaning towards having a general palatalization before front vowels and then depalatalizing them like in Czech and Slovak. I’ve included a similar type of palatalization in Pelsodian.

I'm leaving it at this for now. I invite my two Croatian friends, Zekoslav and Click, into this thread to share their opinions, as they have a fair amount of knowledge and background on Slavic languages while I am an infant stumbling around. Nonetheless, I've learned a lot about the Slavic languages in the last couple of weeks, and hopefully it'll show off here.

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Richards suggests that this type of language may be closer to the South Slavic languages than the West Slavic languages, and that's what I believe too. Nonetheless, it's bound to share some features with Czech and especially Slovak.

If you ever get to this part, what would the stress/tone system look like?

Honestly, the tonal system of Balto-Slavic gives me a huge headache and I am tempted to turn it into a simple stress system. It'll probably be the last thing I'll work on, however Zekoslav has given me a good explanation of the tonal system and I am encouraged to play around with it.

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While it isn't important for Pannonian, considering that you choose to follow Slovak in that regard, in Czech, the outcome of *ę depends on the palatalization of the following consonant (whether later lost or preserved), not on vowel length - that was a mistake I made in a hurry.

It's nice that you're already thinking about dialects, since that might allow you to choose a West Slavic-like development of *tj, *dj in northern dialects and a South Slavic like development in southern dialects. According to Richards, Hungarian might have substituted /tʃ/ for /ts/ before it developed it's own /ts/, so it's not as reliable in discerning the Pannonian reflex of these clusters as I thought.

Concerning accent, the only Slavic language that has lost all traces of the PSl. accent is Macedonian. Since you want to have a vowel length distinction, which all the languages in the area have, you will need to account for accent as it decides which vowels are short and which are long. But don't worry, I'll help as much as I can.

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That's possible, I thought that the town of Vencsellő might've been too far to be affected by a South Slavic change.

Alternatively, I thought we could do something like Hungarian and have the outcome of these clusters be /cç/ and /ɟʝ/ respectively, but I thought that would've been too "archaic" for a non-peripheral area.

I'm guessing our length system will be long on accented syllables, short on non-accented ones (or something like that?)

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That's possible, I thought that the town of Vencsellő might've been too far to be affected by a South Slavic change.

Alternatively, I thought we could do something like Hungarian and have the outcome of these clusters be /cç/ and /ɟʝ/ respectively, but I thought that would've been too "archaic" for a non-peripheral area.

I'm guessing our length system will be long on accented syllables, short on non-accented ones (or something like that?)

Concerning Vencsellő: another possibility is that it was borrowed at a sufficiently early date for the local language to preserve a later depalatalised /tɕ/ ~ /tsʲ/. The preservation of the nasal vowel does suggest early borrowing.

Concerning length and accent: natural Slavic languages are, as usual, much more complicated than that: preservation of length depends on tone, the number of syllables in the word, distance from the accented syllable, and the same can be said for lengthening of short vowels (which additionally tend to be sensitive to consonants closing the syllable, if these exist). With respect to the exact rules, Czech, Slovak and South Slavic each have different rules.

I was thinking about how Pannonian and Pelsodian could influence each other when it comes to accent, and I got some interesting ideas. But, to see how feasible they are, I'd have to know what the distribution of accent in Pelsodian is: Do proparoxytones exist? How many final vowels are preserved?

All of this is looking very promising, so keep up the good work!

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A linguistics enthusiast who would like to make a conlang, but can't decide what to call what.

That's possible, I thought that the town of Vencsellő might've been too far to be affected by a South Slavic change.

Alternatively, I thought we could do something like Hungarian and have the outcome of these clusters be /cç/ and /ɟʝ/ respectively, but I thought that would've been too "archaic" for a non-peripheral area.

I'm guessing our length system will be long on accented syllables, short on non-accented ones (or something like that?)

Concerning Vencsellő: another possibility is that it was borrowed at a sufficiently early date for the local language to preserve a later depalatalised /tɕ/ ~ /tsʲ/. The preservation of the nasal vowel does suggest early borrowing.

Concerning length and accent: natural Slavic languages are, as usual, much more complicated than that: preservation of length depends on tone, the number of syllables in the word, distance from the accented syllable, and the same can be said for lengthening of short vowels (which additionally tend to be sensitive to consonants closing the syllable, if these exist). With respect to the exact rules, Czech, Slovak and South Slavic each have different rules.

I was thinking about how Pannonian and Pelsodian could influence each other when it comes to accent, and I got some interesting ideas. But, to see how feasible they are, I'd have to know what the distribution of accent in Pelsodian is: Do proparoxytones exist? How many final vowels are preserved?

All of this is looking very promising, so keep up the good work!

Or the nasal consonant could suggest an uncoupling. Although the length of Hungarian contact isn't too long, merely that a lot of changes happened in a short time span.

Hrrm. Very well then. I'd like to see your ideas.

I've taken it as an areal feature that would lose unstressed /i/ and /u/ word finally, while preserving /a/. Though concerning stress, I briefly had the idea of syncoping pretonic unstressed vowels in certain environments, shifting stress to the front of many words. Had I placed this romlang in the Czech Republic proper (Bohemian), that's certainly something I would have done. Regardless of what happens, I think the situation with stress would become more chaotic and unstable, as some words remain proparoxytone, some do not. Much like Russian in that case.

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Richards suggests that this type of language may be closer to the South Slavic languages than the West Slavic languages, and that's what I believe too. Nonetheless, it's bound to share some features with Czech and especially Slovak.

I was asking because I have a (currently on hold) Slavic Altlang, that's in a separate branch, that's sort of a transition between East and West (with the later providing heavy Lechitic influence via Polish), Slowarian: (viewtopic.php?t=6525&f=6 -I'm thinking of reviving the project, but I want other Slavlangers' input)

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
-JRR Tolkien

Background: For the last two weeks, Zekoslav and I have been collaborating to try to reconstruct the Slavic language of western Hungary. Originally meant to act as a superstrate for my Pannonian Romance conlang, I’ve split it off into its own thing.

Outcome of /ę/: In most Croatian dialects, this vowel merges straight with /e/. In Czech, this led to a 2-way split between /a/ and /e/ depending on whether it was short or long. In Slovak, the quality of this vowel is preserved as is, with no change — /æ/. Although I have no evidence to suggest for it, I believe Pannonian dialects will preserve /æ/, unless I can find some dialects in central Slovakia that run the contrary, or loans in Hungarian that suggest otherwise. My romance conlang Pelsodian, too, has [æ] for its /a/, and so does its Romance neighbors to the west (barring the Dalmatian language). Therefore, I have an incentive to preserve /æ/, though I am still open to change.

Outcome of *tj *dj: This became alveolar affricates in West Slavic and alveopalatal affricates in South Slavic. The outcome of some Hungarian towns such as Vencsellő < *Vętjeslavŭ seems to suggest a South Slavic reflex. Therefore, the outcome of *tj *dj is /t͡ʃ/ /d͡ʒ/. As this occurs, the clusters *stj and *zdj behave differently, as they might always have been affricates. I’ve decided to treat them as single *tj *dj and have the outcome be the same.

I'm not sure I follow the last sentence. Do you mean that you'll be treating *stj and *zdj as if they were just *tj and *dj?

Palatalization: While I am waiting to see what outcomes in Hungarian may suggest, I am leaning towards having a general palatalization before front vowels and then depalatalizing them like in Czech and Slovak. I’ve included a similar type of palatalization in Pelsodian.

Richards suggests that this type of language may be closer to the South Slavic languages than the West Slavic languages, and that's what I believe too. Nonetheless, it's bound to share some features with Czech and especially Slovak.

I was asking because I have a (currently on hold) Slavic Altlang, that's in a separate branch, that's sort of a transition between East and West (with the later providing heavy Lechitic influence via Polish), Slowarian: (viewtopic.php?t=6525&f=6 -I'm thinking of reviving the project, but I want other Slavlangers' input)

The major POD is that the Hungarians, for whatever reason, are defeated at the Battle of Pressburg, and are pushed out of western Pannonia by Braslav (a major historical figure to the Pannonians).

What happened to the Hungarians afterwards, if you've thought about that?

I imagine the Hungarians still exist, but only east of the Danube. Austria is still powerful in this timeline as ours, and so Pannonia gets incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire along with Hungary.

Outcome of /ę/: In most Croatian dialects, this vowel merges straight with /e/. In Czech, this led to a 2-way split between /a/ and /e/ depending on whether it was short or long. In Slovak, the quality of this vowel is preserved as is, with no change — /æ/. Although I have no evidence to suggest for it, I believe Pannonian dialects will preserve /æ/, unless I can find some dialects in central Slovakia that run the contrary, or loans in Hungarian that suggest otherwise. My romance conlang Pelsodian, too, has [æ] for its /a/, and so does its Romance neighbors to the west (barring the Dalmatian language). Therefore, I have an incentive to preserve /æ/, though I am still open to change.

Outcome of *tj *dj: This became alveolar affricates in West Slavic and alveopalatal affricates in South Slavic. The outcome of some Hungarian towns such as Vencsellő < *Vętjeslavŭ seems to suggest a South Slavic reflex. Therefore, the outcome of *tj *dj is /t͡ʃ/ /d͡ʒ/. As this occurs, the clusters *stj and *zdj behave differently, as they might always have been affricates. I’ve decided to treat them as single *tj *dj and have the outcome be the same.

I'm not sure I follow the last sentence. Do you mean that you'll be treating *stj and *zdj as if they were just *tj and *dj?

Palatalization: While I am waiting to see what outcomes in Hungarian may suggest, I am leaning towards having a general palatalization before front vowels and then depalatalizing them like in Czech and Slovak. I’ve included a similar type of palatalization in Pelsodian.

Could you perhaps give an example of this potential process?

I'll leave this for Zekoslav to explain.

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Re: Ælfwine: Had Pelsodian eliminated the proparoxytones, essentially limiting stress to the last two syllables of the words, I'd have introduced the same limitation into Pannonian as a result of substrate influence (maybe even introducing predictable, syllable weight-based stress). However, I think more interesting stuff can be done.

Re: Shimo: Originally, West Slavic palatalized all consonants before front vowels (which was phonemicized when some of these vowels were lost). This is preserved to it's fullest extent in Polish, but in Czech and Slovak, most of these consonants were later depalatalized (possibly due to areal influence - the only palatals left were those present in Hungarian, /c/, /ɟ/ and /ɲ/ respectively, and even those were depalatalized in Czech in some positions). However, development of certain vowels shows that palatalization was once more common.

Since South Slavic lacks this palatalization entirely, it's up to Ælfwine to decide what Pannonian's position will be.

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A linguistics enthusiast who would like to make a conlang, but can't decide what to call what.

Honestly, I didn't think that Pelsodian would affect Pannonian that much outside of a few loanwords. Remember that the former is limited to only a few disparate cities, while the latter is the national language of a state...

A few more additions to Jezik Panoski:

A prosthetic /v/ will be added before *u

Future tense created by biti and the -l participle

[g] shall lenite to [ɦ] inter-vocally

Possible preservation of the Proto-Slavic dual number, if sound changes allow for it.

Unfortunately I don't think I am able to obtain a pdf of Richard's actual book and the closest copy I can get is in...Ann Arbor, Michigan (I live on the East Coast fyi.) Which is disappointing, but alas what can you do.

Concerning re: palatalization, I don't think I'll include it for now, unless anything comes up to suggest the contrary. Do we know the reflex in some central/southern Slovakian dialects?

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I've read your Guide, Zeko, however I am quite unsure on what direction I want to take accent and stress in Pannonian. I think innovating vowel length like my neighbors is more than likely though.

Now, stress. It seems to me likely that, due to the loss of yers, stress would have a tendency to be retracted to the preceding syllable wherever possible. I imagine the stress system to be similar to Shtokavian, and form a continuum with Slovakian in the north. However, stress would probably not be entirely fixed (unlike Slovakian), there would be exceptions strewn about, but the general tendency would be on the first strong syllable (nb not necessarily the initial syllable), and over time this would be grammaticalized.

Thoughts?

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I've read your Guide, Zeko, however I am quite unsure on what direction I want to take accent and stress in Pannonian. I think innovating vowel length like my neighbors is more than likely though.

Now, stress. It seems to me likely that, due to the loss of yers, stress would have a tendency to be retracted to the preceding syllable wherever possible. I imagine the stress system to be similar to Shtokavian, and form a continuum with Slovakian in the north. However, stress would probably not be entirely fixed (unlike Slovakian), there would be exceptions strewn about, but the general tendency would be on the first strong syllable (nb not necessarily the initial syllable), and over time this would be grammaticalized.

Thoughts?

Concerning the Neo-Štokavian retraction (general retraction of stress to the preceding syllable), it happened hundreds of years after the loss of yers (sometimes in the 15th century). It began in the southeast and failed to reach the dialects spoken along the Drava river, that is, the dialects that will directly neighbour Pannonian.

The only retraction related to the loss of yers is the retraction from the lost yer itself, which happened in all Slavic languages and caused no further retractions.

That doesn't stop you from retracting accent in Pannonian. I would suggest the most common type of retraction in Slavic, from a short final syllable, and maybe later a retraction from a short internal syllable, both of which would give you a good base for introducing a Latin-like weight-based system.

Concerning my guide for accenting Slavic words, I should probably make that into a thread of it's own...

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A linguistics enthusiast who would like to make a conlang, but can't decide what to call what.

Concerning my guide for accenting Slavic words, I should probably make that into a thread of it's own...

I just wanted to say, I've been half-following this thread and was about to ask where I could find this Guide. Please, if you have a chance, make that thread!

Oh, it's just a jokingly named PM I sent to Ælfwine where I tried to explain the basics of Slavic accentuation in a much too limited space - I agree that a proper thread is in order. Should I post it in L&N or the Beginners' corner?

BTW, I like the look of Getic - it's interesting how it's both similar and different from my own IE. conlang (which I should also post more about...). I'm eagerly awaiting to see what you've done with verbs.

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A linguistics enthusiast who would like to make a conlang, but can't decide what to call what.

Oh, I see. Regardless of those humble beginnings, I think it would be a very welcome thread in either forum, or even in Teach & Share.

And it's nice to hear you're interested in Getic verbs--I'm also excited to find out how they work. (Seriously, though, I've been treading water and you've reminded me to ask for some resources about IE verbs.)

Fitting in with nearby Czech, Slovak, German and Hungarian, Pannonian stress will ultimately develop on the strong first syllable, although it may not be so thorough and words (particularly from Latin) with stress on the penultimate or ultimate can be found.

How this will fit in with the accent system, I do not know. I need to research more about Slovak, as I imagine it would be more similar to that. I don't find it too likely that Pannonian will preserve accent though, but length it might.

Additionally, I've updated the OP with some early sound changes that start differentiating the language from its neighbors to the south, west and north. I've also added a translation challenge to be worked on later.

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